For Patients and Families

The California Society of Anesthesiologists, like the American Society for Anesthesiologists, is an advocate for all patients who require anesthesia or relief from pain. The ASA states, "Anesthesiologists are considered the medical experts in patient safety before, during and following surgical and diagnostic procedures." The California Society of Anesthesiologists wishes to further patients' understanding about the practice of anesthesiology and what to expect while under an anesthesiologist's care.

The CSA especially encourages all patients to visit the ASA's Web siteLifeline to Modern Medicine, which contains relevant and important information regaring anesthesia safety, including patient stories, a video library, news articles, and patient FAQs.

It's not by drugs alone that physician anesthesiologists can reduce patient anxiety and make them feel good about their experience in the hospital. Patient education provided by these specialists is beginning to show improvement on an important key indicator for at least one hospital: patient satisfaction.

Anesthesia Risk Assessment Tool
Drs. Lynnus Peng and John MacCarthy have developed a helpful Anesthesia Risk Assessment tool that can help you determine what questions you should ask your anesthesiologist before your surgery.

CSA Statement on Intraoperative Awareness

The CSA expresses its concern for any patient who experiences awareness under general anesthesia. While such awareness is a rare event, it is an area of discussion in the public arena. It is the intent of the CSA to educate and inform our patients and the public on the issue of intraoperative awareness in a straightforward manner.

Anesthesiologists are trained to minimize the occurrence of awareness under general anesthesia. It is recognized that on rare occasions, usually associated with a patient's critical condition, this may be unavoidable. Furthermore, it is commonplace in contemporary anesthetic practice to employ a variety of techniques using regional nerve blocks and varying degrees of sedation. Patients often do not make a distinction between these techniques and general anesthesia, yet awareness is often expected and anticipated with the former. This may have led to a misunderstanding of "awareness" during surgery by many patients.

Educación pública: La anestesia y usted...

In addition, the CSA has obtained permission from the Texas Society of Anesthesiologists and the ASA to reprint several of the patient education papers that have been prepared in Spanish. You may access these papers below.